The need to store digital files, documents, pictures, images and other data continues to increase rapidly. In connection with the electronic storage of data, systems incorporating one or more data storage controllers have been devised. Storage controllers receive data read and write requests from host computers and control one or more physical storage devices to beneficially store or provide the requested data from/to the host computers.
Storage controllers generally buffer read and write data requests, often converting the host data read and write requests into RAID or storage device read or write commands. Many storage controllers store read and write data in cache memories included as part of the storage controllers. In general, storage controllers are designed and intended to service both sequential and random read and write requests from one or more host computers. Sequential requests are generally sent to a storage controller as either a stream of read requests or a stream of write requests. Most of the time, the Logical Block Addresses of later-issued sequential requests are spatially adjacent to the immediately preceding sequential request, and a sequential stream is generally, but not necessarily, consistently increasing or decreasing in LBA.
Once processing a sequential stream, conventional storage controllers continue processing the stream until the controller detects the stream has ended. In this way, sequential read or write performance is maximized to the host computer issuing the sequential stream.